Montezuma-Cortez Re-1 District Superintendent Lori Haukeness on Tuesday announced that the Re-1 School District is off the accountability clock.
The district received notification last week from the Colorado Department of Education that the district’s request for reconsideration had been approved. Haukeness released a statement on Tuesday.
“We have been on, quite frankly, what we call the hot list for the last eight years due to low achievement and low performance,” Haukeness said, referring to a chart. “This year would have been year seven or actually year eight because when there was a moratorium of being on accreditation watch. The exciting thing is that in 2017 there is a blue box.”
That blue box means that the district is no longer on the accreditation clock.
Haukeness announced that Re-1 is no longer classified as a turnaround district to the school board at its monthly meeting Tuesday night to rounds of applause.
“We are very proud of this increase in our district’s accreditation,” Haukeness said Tuesday in the news release. “This is due to the hard work of our teachers and students. We are happy to celebrate this accomplishment, and we remain committed to our goal of improving student achievement and to ensuring we are a district of excellence for all our students.”
The district submitted its request in early September, when the district was 1.6 points away from moving off the clock, according to preliminary accreditation ratings released Aug. 25 by the Colorado Department of Education.
The state required improvement plans after low accreditation ratings from the Colorado Department of Education in fall 2016. The district was accredited under a two-year pathways plan for improvement, which focused on improvement in PARCC test scores in English and math.
The school district’s accreditation rating has been increased to “accredited with improvement plan.” According to Haukeness, the district will continue this plan to continue improvements in the district.
“We would like to congratulate the staff and students of RE-1 for attaining this higher level of accreditation,” stated Peter Sherman, executive director of School and District Performance for the Colorado Department of Education. “We look forward to continuing to work with the RE-1 team to support the continued growth and achievement of all students.”
Four Colorado districts improved enough to move off on the accountability clock, including Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 and Julesburg RE-1, according to the CDE. Huerfano RE-1 and Lake County R-1 were both in their first year on the clock in 2016. Lake County moved up two levels this year from “priority improvement” to “accredited.”